BASEBALL

By CLAIRE SMITH

Published: February 7, 1994

As the one-time head of Madison Square Garden Sports Group, Jack Diller surely saw more than his fair share of circus acts. And athletes broken of spirit and body after boxing matches in the Felt Forum. And surely no team epitomized the frustration of near-misses in hockey championship runs more than the Rangers.

Perhaps that is why Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday ultimately decided that Diller was just the person to close out the circus that has been the New York Mets, to fix the ball club's broken and battered image and help end its losing ways.

The co-owners of the Mets charged Diller with those unenviable tasks when they hired him to fill the newly created position of executive vice president for business operations. Diller, in charge of everything but the on-field baseball operations, is now in his third month of trying as massive a face lift as ever undertaken at the Garden or even Yankee Stadium for that matter.

In the long-term, Diller has been charged with making Wilpon's and Doubleday's dream of a 21st century multipurpose sports and entertainment complex in Flushing a reality. In the meantime, he is to make Shea Stadium more attractive to fans. And perhaps most important, Diller is also being trusted to make the team attractive and palatable to fans again after two years filled with on-field losses and off-field scandal. How to Mend an Image

Diller and the Mets believe that all the above is as imperative as reversing the 103-loss 1993 season because the Mets are trying to run a business. And that business was being hurt -- by the constant losing, by an image tattered because of a seemingly unending string of ill-timed and sometimes dangerous players' pranks and by the perception that Shea has become something less than a fan-friendly ball park.

"The fact of the new complex project is clearly of great interest and as time goes on it will take more and more of my time and effort," Diller said. "But the coming-in proposition is to focus on what we need to do here at Shea Stadium and the current issues."

Diller's assignment may well be the easier of the two given the Mets' top pair of executives. After all, Joe McIlvaine, about to enter his first full season as the Mets' general manager, has to find a way to cull more than 59 victories from a roster that may wind up much younger and greener than it was in 1993.

Still, Diller will be scrutinized as much as McIlvaine will be. It's not only because he is also trying to make a comeback of sorts, having last appeared on the New York sports scene in 1991, when he was dismissed as president of the Madison Square Garden Sports Group, the Knicks and the Rangers. It's because Mets ownership has acknowledged that the team's image as the laughing stock of baseball is embarrassing enough to threaten the very fan base it depends upon. 500 Reasons to Stay Home

"We're a business that has to present a clean, enjoyable environment," Diller said. "We're not just competing with our friends up in the Bronx. We're competing with everything from Jones Beach to a 500-channel television environment. That's 500 reasons to stay home and not spend money -- unless it's really something that they find enjoyable."

So the Mets have gone to work on sprucing up everything from the stadium to the staff. "What we're doing at Shea will in some ways change the physical environment, adding more color, banners, new music," Diller said.

There will also be a new facility in right field that will include playground and game activities for children though it may not be fully ready by opening day.

Diller and other Mets executives have fanned out across the country to see how other sports and entertainment complexes, from the Skydome in Chicago to Disney World, approach public relations. Their interest goes beyond just wanting happier fans. Diller also hopes to convince the public that it will be a cleaner Shea Stadium to visit, and a safer one as well.

Diller acknowledges that there are stadium horror stories, some reminiscent of those tales once told about rowdiness in the blue-seat sections high up in the Garden.

"That was one of the biggest things we had to deal with continually," recalled Diller, who held the Garden sports president's post from 1987 to 1991. "We had to turn around what actually was happening in the infamous blue seats, then to make sure that people actually believed things were different." Pump Up the Security

Diller hopes to accomplish those kinds of goals at Shea by beefing up security and making sure that the staff will firmly dissuade the abuse of alcohol and deal more swiftly with rowdy fans.

"It is our intention and policy to put in the time and money behind improving the environment, whether it's outside the park or within," Diller said, "because the bottom line is, nobody has to come here. You can decide there's a lot of other things you can do with your leisure time and your money. That's why we want to make it as safe as possible so people will want to bring their children, or their dates, or friends and family."

Diller hopes that the upgrading and the emphasis on the fan will serve as a bridge to a new era for the team. And somewhere in that new era he hopes will be a facility that will be even more impressive than the Skydome and Camden Yards park in Baltimore.

Talk of such a facility causes Diller's eyes to sparkle. For he remembers what the refurbishing of the Garden meant to New York and the sports teams that play there.

"It's to be more like something that's never been done before," Diller said. "It should become one of the prime attractions in New York."

The plan, though not fully developed, envisions a ball park with a retractable roof and real grass. It will also double as a multipurpose entertainment center, a la the Skydome, not only designed to draw concert-goers, but conventioneers as well. The Mets hope that is especially appealing to the city, which could use the complex's proximity to La Guardia Airport as a selling point in its competition with new convention centers in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Diller says the center will offer new technology. He's talking virtual reality here, where concepts that used to take acres and acres can be recreated in an electronic theme park. "Any experience can be recreated," Diller said. "And you can create it in a very small space." Technological Advances

As for baseball, Diller also envisions technology at each fans' fingertips. An example: headphones at each seat. Plug them in and broadcasts, ranging from the commercial to the educational, will be at one's beck and call. Diller especially likes the educational theme, with children -- baseball's future ticket buyers -- learning about the game as it unfolds in front of them.

"It's a brave new world out there and what we want to do is incorporate that kind of technology," Diller said with a smile. "That's why it's hard to compare what we hope to build to anything out there. I don't want to say Astrodome or Skydome or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Because if someone asks if those are good comparisons, well, it's just not quite it."

Just when this will all come about is still not known. The Mets have held discussions with the present and former city administrations, transportation officials and the Port Authority as well as major entertainment entities. Though Diller won't give a specific time frame, he hopes to see such a complex built before the turn of the century.

"And you know the beautiful thing about it is that when you get all through with it and you have it all built, as wonderful as it is, it's still going to require somebody to get out on the mound, wind up and throw the ball," Diller said. "It's still baseball and it's still the game that's meant so much to New Yorkers."

Until that futuristic opening day comes, Diller and the Mets have more reachable and equally as important goals to fulfill. So the polishing of the act, from field level on up, continues. All the while, Diller can only hope the fans will indeed give another chance to the Mets they once found so amazing.

"We're going to do our best to see that that happens," Diller said. "What we're saying, what we're promising is that from the way we answer the telephones to the way we say 'good night' to people on their way out of the ball park, we genuinely appreciate the fact that they came and spent some time with us and some money on us."

Photo: Jack Diller, executive vice president for business operations for the Mets, is being trusted to make the team attractive and palatable to fans again. (Alan Zale for The New York Times)